Blogging A-Z: C Is for Coldwater

            Jack was born in Coldwater, Kansas, a town of about 1,200 people in the south-central part of the state, a few months after Pearl Harbor. The town is in Comanche County, which borders Oklahoma. Jack’s parents, and 6-year-old brother and 8-year-old sister, lived in their own house on Jack’s grandfather’s ranch. His grandfather bought baby calves, fattened them up, and drove them north to sell.

            Coldwater was what is known as a “sunset” town, i.e., it had a sign at the town limit with

this message: “N*****, don’t let the sun set on your black head in Coldwater.” That sign still existed into the mid-1950s, when Jack came to visit his grandparents on “the farm.” Other towns in the county are Protection and Buttermilk. Coldwater now has a population a bit over 800, Protection about 500, and Buttermilk barely exists any more.

            Jack’s father, Lawrence, worked for his father, but their relationship was strained; one year, Lawrence failed to return home immediately after selling the cattle because he was drinking up much of the money. By 1944, he moved his family up to Wichita, where he’d started working at Boeing, which was churning out warplanes, and the family lived in a war-time housing community called Planeview.  

------------------------------------------

April’s writing challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to have 26 days in the month.